This invention relates to egg-laying installations and more particularly to a method of cleaning manure from support surfaces of such installations.
Egg-laying installations in the form of housings or pens typically contain poultry nests in the form of individual or multiple units of wooden, sheet metal or plastic boxes for the hens. Removable nest pads or liners are often used in the nests as cushions to support the hens and eggs. These usually are mats of rubber or non-woven or plastic material or molded coverings on wooden frames. A commercially popular nest pad is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,159,896, issued Nov. 3, 1992, the pad description of which is incorporated herein by reference. In brief, the pad is a colored, molded grass-like thermoplastic mat with openings in a matrix base to facilitate drainage through the pad during cleaning. These pads typically last about 3 to 5 years and, since egg production is enhanced in a clean environment, as well for economic reasons, they are cleaned after each flock of chickens lays its eggs before the next flock is introduced into the installation. Nest management time and expense in cleaning waste chicken manure from the various support surfaces of the egg-laying installation are desirably minimized. These various surfaces where a hen is likely to perch include the house floor, support slats, individual nest pads and the like. In the past such surfaces were cleaned by physically shaking, scraping or brushing manure from the surfaces or by soaking or spraying with water or a cleaning solution. Cleaning is quite difficult since the manure attaches like cement to the soiled surfaces, particularly to the protruding tufts or fingers of the grass-like pad of the ""186 patent when that form of pad is used. Even after soaking in water for several days, many minutes of flushing at high pressure are required.
Now improvements have been made in cleaning poultry manure from support surfaces of egg-laying installations.
Accordingly, a principal object of this invention is to provide a method for cleaning poultry manure from support surfaces of an egg-laying installation.
A specific object is to provide such a method which is readily useable with removable poultry nest pads soiled with hardened chicken manure, particularly the grass-like mats disclosed in the ""186 patent.
Other objects will in part be obvious and will in part appear from the following detailed description and claims.
These and other objects are accomplished by providing a method of cleaning poultry manure from support surfaces of an egg-laying installation which comprises contacting the manure with an aqueous solution obtained by combining water and one or more compounds selected from alkali metal polyphosphates, organo-phosphonates, alkali metal salts of nitriloacetic acid and alkali metal salts of ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid. The preferred compound is tetrapotassium polyphosphate.